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From the Minister's Study - Rev. David Gray |
It is a standing joke in our family that my mother (who is not normally a gloomy person) always says around 10pm each Christmas night “Oh well. That’s it all over for another year.” I first realised around 20 years ago that she was saying this or something similar each year and so one Christmas around 10pm I phoned her and said I was just calling to say “Oh well. That’s it all over for another year.” And as I say it has now become a family joke.
Of course I know what my mum means. There is so much anticipation of Christmas. In church there is the anticipation Advent promises, there are the carol services and nativity plays (for the record at the time of writing I am due to attend 9 in churches and various schools.) And in the outside world there is the food buying and present buying credit crunch notwithstanding. Weeks and weeks of frenzied activity leading up to one day and then “Oh well. That’s it all over for another year.”
It's 3rd December and so far I've only heard Slade's "Merry Xmas everybody" twice in shops but as yet I've not heard WIzzards "I wish it could be CHristmas everyday". The chorus of that old favourite goes:
Well I wish it could be Christmas every day
When the kids start singing and the band begins to play
Oh I wish it could be Christmas everyday
So let the bells ring out for Christmas
But as happy as Christmas can be and as much as we enjoy it, it can’t be Christmas every day. And our faith would be very different if Christmas was the whole story. In fact I’d go so far as to say that if the story of Jesus had begun and ended with his birth in Bethlehem it would be no story at all.
So enjoy Christmas and if you must, you have my permission to say “Oh well. That’s it over for another year” – provided that you promise to remember that all that is over is the celebration of the beginning of Jesus’ story and that the whole story never ends.
God bless.
David